Tag Archives: Free Market

One of the greatest dangers of any thinking person is to supplant one’s deductive reasoning capabilities for the judgment of one in a position of authority. While I certainly do recognize that some are masters in their craft and should rightly be considered authority figures in their field, this is a far cry from abdicating one’s sense of morality and reason to another who would claim to rightfully dominate and subjugate.

People are imperfect and fallible. There is never sufficient reason to forsake your powers of reason. This would betray the very kernel of what it means to be a human being. This would be transform you into the shadow of a human being. Human beings are not built to blindly and unquestioningly obey orders. That is what machines were created for. A healthy skepticism for anyone who claims the moral right to rule is requisite for a just and civilized society.

What is the true cost of interjecting unwarranted coercion into peaceful acts?

That’s a huge question to answer. We break this down into smaller, yet still fairly big topics.
-The Broken Window Fallacy
-The Tragedy of the Commons
-How taxes coerce conformity in other aspects of life
-How tax funded regulations encourage poverty

The unintended consequences of taxation are nearly infinite. What doesn’t have to be is our nescient about them. By understanding what wealth, how it is created, and what its purpose is we can break down the idea of taxation and show the world what it really is:

A practice befitting a less civilized, intelligent, and courageous period of Humanity’s history.

It is quite easy to understand the reason for our own choices and preferences. It is far more difficult to empathize with another to discover and understand the reason for their choices and preferences. If we desire absolute freedom to live as we so wish without interference, we must desire absolute freedom for our brothers and sisters all over the world.

Peaceful people engage in decision making everyday based on complex criteria that only they can apprehend. We may have our provincial ideas about how others should live, but to endeavor to coercively impose our views onto them individually or via the guns of the State would be the very definition of slavery. That would make us the masters and them the slaves.

Most people are struggling in their own lives to discover how to live and what are the best choices to make. If we cannot know the optimal manner in which to live, to expect others to bend to our will about what is best for them would be the height of hubristic folly. The only logically consistent choice is absolute freedom for all without exception provided nobody is being aggressed upon. This is the essence of Free Market Capitalism and Voluntaryism.

What does it mean to be open-minded? Are all philosophies equally valid? Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong all had philosophies but millions of people died as a result. I would assert that some philosophies are demonstrably false and others outright destructive. The validity of morality and economics, like mathematics, is determined by the application of basic principles. These are the tools one must use to make sense of a world of conflicting ideologies. Principles must be universalizable, reproducible, and logical for them to be valid. They are not contingent upon feelings, emotions, the weather, religion, age, place of birth, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. This would place them in the category of beliefs.

Most action originates from thought. All the wealth that has been created was first the incorporeal contemplation of an intrepid individual who dared to imagine a better world. It takes supreme courage to proclaim, “I want to improve the world for my brothers and sisters by serving them!” The power of ideas can never be underestimated. It is only by the steady refinement of our intellect that civilization has been conceivable. Celebrate the principles and ideas that have made progress possible, nay inevitable!

Many people see injustice in the world and vigorously seek to remedy it. They travel to far away distant lands to right some of the myriad wrongs daily committed. While this is certainly commendable, I believe there is a far better way to improve the world. It is far easier to direct, command, and micro-manage other people. It is far easier to tell them how they should live their lives according to our provincial understanding of their experience. It is far more difficult to recognize the faults and imperfections in one’s own character and strive to remedy that. If you truly want to improve the world, present it with one thoroughly improved unit, yourself. Do not ask that others emulate your life, rather endeavor to live a life worthy of emulation. People recognize value when they see it.

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.

Voltaire

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.

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